Abstract
The ruins of six ancient caravan cities in the foothills and highlands of the Negev, and innumerable other remains, attest to the existence of flourishing agriculture and a thriving civilization in the Israelite period (about 950 to 700 B.C.) and the Nabatean and Roman-Byzantine periods (about 300 B.C. to 630 A.D.). If however, there has been essentially no climatic change in the last three thousand years, how could ancient farmers have cultivated the land under a 100 mm or even 200 mm average annual rainfall without any source of additional water for irrigation? It took Michael Evenari and his colleagues many years of intensive effort to answer this question (Evenari et al 1971). Their investigations revealed, first of all, that all ancient agriculture in the Negev foothills and highlands was based on the utilization of surface run-off from small and large watersheds, which they called ‘run-off’ farming.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
References
Bassham, J. A. : 1977, ‘Increasing Crop Production through More Controlled Photosynthesis’, Science, 197, 630–638.
Ben-Amotz, A. and Acron, M.: 1978, ‘On the Mechanism of Osnoregulation in Dunaliella’, in Caplan, S. R. and Ginzburg, M. (eds.), Energetics and Structure of Halophilic Microorganisms, Elsevier, Amsterdam, pp. 523–541.
Stalking the Wild Cash Crop, Business Week, November 6, 1978.
Chemicals Bloom in the Desert, Chemical Week, February, 1979.
De Malach, Y., Pasternak, D. and Twersky, M.: 1977, ‘Drip Irrigation, a Better Solution for Crop Production with Brackish Water in Deserts’, United Nations Conference on Alternative Strategies for Desert Development and Management, Sacramento, Calif., November 6, 1978.
Evenari, M., Shanan, L., and Tadmor, N.: 1971, The Negev, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass.
Evenari, M., Nessler, U., Rogel, A., and Schenk, O.: 1975, ‘Fields and Pastures in Deserts’, Information and Consultation, University of Darmstadt.
Forti, M. : 1971, Introduction of Fodder Shrubs and their Evaluation for Use in Semi-Arid areas of the North-Western Negev, Publication of the Negev Institute for Arid Zone Research, Beer-Sheva, Israel.
Forti, M. : 1977, in E. Zohar (ed.), The Desert, Past, Present and Future, Reshafim, Tel Aviv.
Forti, M. : 1978, Experiments in Jojoba Cultivation in 1977, Research and Development Authority, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.
Gale, J. : 1979, ‘Controlled Environment Agriculture for Hot Desert Region’, in Grace, J., Ford, E. D. and Jarvis, P. G. (eds.), Plants and their Atmospheric Environment, The 21st Symposium of the British Ecological Society, Edinburgh.
Granoth, G. and Porath, D.: 1983, ‘An Attempt to Optimize Feed Utilization by Tilapia in a Flow- through Aquaculture’, in E. Fizhelzon (ed.), Proceedings International Symp. on Tilapia and Aqua- culture, Nazereth, Israel, pp. 550–558.
Hernandez, V., Gross, U. and Gross, R.: 1978, Some Remarks about a Testing Program for Single Cell Protein (SCP) as Food Additives in Peru, on the Example of the Microalgae Scenedesmus acutus, Institudo de nutricion, Tr. Tirzon, Y. Bueno, Lima, Peru.
Heth, D. and Dan, J.: 1978, New Data on Tree Introduction in the Negev, Agricultural Research Organization, Leaflet No. 65, Division of Scientific Publications, Bet Dagan, Israel.
Issar, A., Bein, A., and Michaeli: 1972, ‘On the Ancient Water Resources of the Upper Nubian Sandstone Aquifer in Central Sinai and Southern Israel’, Journal of Hydrology, 17, 353–374.
Issar, A. : 1979, Water in the Negev, Institute for Desert Research, Sede Boqer, Israel, and ‘Groundwater in the Negev’, in Shmueli, A. and Gradus, Y. (eds.), The Land of the Negev, Part I, Minstry of Defence, Tel Aviv.
Laboratory Report No. 6020428 issued by Japan Food Research Laboratories, 1976.
Kobe, S. : 1977, ‘Drip Irrigation’, Scientific American, November, pp. 62–68.
Underexploited Tropical Plants with Promising Economic Value, National Academy of Science, Washington, D.C., 1975.
Oron, G., Granoth, G., and Porath, D.: 1983, ‘Intensified Controlled Fish Growth in Tanks Implementing a Multipurpose Flow Device’, Biotechnology and Bioengineering, 25, 351–361.
Richmond, A. : 1983, ‘Phototropic Microalgae’, in Dellweg, H. (ed.), Biotechnology, Vol. 3, Verlag Chemie, Weinheim.
Richmond, A. : 1985, Microalgal Mass Culture, CRC Press, Boca Raton, Fla. (in press).
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 1985 D.Reidel Publishing Company
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Richmond, A. (1985). Desert Agriculture — Past and Future. In: Gradus, Y. (eds) Desert Development. The GeoJournal Library, vol 4. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5396-3_11
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-009-5396-3_11
Publisher Name: Springer, Dordrecht
Print ISBN: 978-94-010-8882-4
Online ISBN: 978-94-009-5396-3
eBook Packages: Springer Book Archive